Workstation Naming Schemes

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rayoc79

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Props to everyone for making this such a great forum....

My question is for all those Sys Admins out there and it simply is, what is the naming scheme of your desktops/workstations? Do you incorporate the users ID, the serial number, the type of OS, the location of the building?

Just wondering........ How would you go about doing this?
 
I use the room number from the building blueprints followed by a letter and number naming sytem. I have to keep a building map at my desk but that way I don't have to change computer names when people quit. I used to use the employee name but I could never find computers after two or the people had come and gone.

The letter number system Goes by Rows and columns. Closest from the door in any room is Row A Column 1. The computer names come out something like A105-A1.

Hope that helps.
 
I just started a new job, and the naming is pretty good here. What I mean is, the policy seems to have been adhered to.

Ours goes by the building id then a dash and then the inhouse inventory tag. Works pretty good so you can see all the machines on in each building on our network. If you need to remote in, you can just ask for the inventory tag over the phone which is stuck on the top of the machine for easy viewing. Or look at an inventory sheet.

When I worked at a university we usually did the building and room number. If there was more than 1 machine, or was a lab, we often started with 1 and then up from there, and included lab in the title if it was a lab.

At my last position, accounting firm, we went by inventory tag exclusivly. However, people entered it in differently, so it was impoosible to go clicking around for machines easily. It was a policy that needed to be better infornced and managed. It was haphazzard :D

:edit
depending on the business setup and other data, all methods could potentionally be a good setup. Username, machine inventory tag, building + room# and so forth.
 
City, Cost Center, serial of machine (7 digits) 15 digits which works for AD

For example my laptop. City in MGM (airport codes used), cost center is 08739, serial 5006r51

mgm087395006r51

Sort of a pain in the ass but it tells you enough about the machine.
 
I don't like any naming convention that identifys a user or location. too much of a pain when moving users. unjoin from the domain. rename the pc, reboot, rejoin. we just use asset tags. DDCXXXXXX(ddc + 6 digits). I can locate by build, floor, and north or south by IP subnet. I don't need a pc name to do that.
 
for my home network I am using Planet names right now for the workstations and the servers are server-001 thru server-005

my old high school it went by the school number _ PCTag _ RM Number

1245_G1305831_311
 
My clients are smaller business...under 100 pcs...so I can generally get away with doing more of a location, or position. I tend to somewhat "workgroup" name PCs in the department that they're in. Acct1, Acct2, Recp1, Recp2, Billing, Development, Bereavement, etc etc. Sort of naming the PC according to where it's located in the office...the job title or role of the person who sits behind it.

I rarely use a persons name, unless it's an important person..like CEO or owner, some position that's not high turnover. As noted above...it's a pain changing names of a computer, and with high turnover of some positions, it's not practical.

For clients where I built a WAN over several locations spread across the state(s)...I'll add 3x letters denoting the location (such as the town) followed by a hyphen..then follow my usual convention.

For servers I often use some pun on the business...some quirky funny word based on what that business does.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
My clients are smaller business...under 100 pcs...so I can generally get away with doing more of a location, or position. I tend to somewhat "workgroup" name PCs in the department that they're in. Acct1, Acct2, Recp1, Recp2, Billing, Development, Bereavement, etc etc. Sort of naming the PC according to where it's located in the office...the job title or role of the person who sits behind it.

I rarely use a persons name, unless it's an important person..like CEO or owner, some position that's not high turnover. As noted above...it's a pain changing names of a computer, and with high turnover of some positions, it's not practical.

For clients where I built a WAN over several locations spread across the state(s)...I'll add 3x letters denoting the location (such as the town) followed by a hyphen..then follow my usual convention.

For servers I often use some pun on the business...some quirky funny word based on what that business does.
Click to expand...

I feel that the discription field is there for thins like people names or locations. That can be updated easy.
 
oakfan52 said:
I feel that the discription field is there for thins like people names or locations. That can be updated easy.
Click to expand...

Certainly can be. I generally only use that for printer shares...I'll give a description of location of the printer. As for PCs I've never found a reason to fill in the description area....save for "Secretary wears G Strings on Fridays"

One of the things I like about naming the PC as something I'd be able to tell where it is....is for reference in the antivirus management console. I can see if a PC received a hit recently...and know by the name of the PC right where to go. Or sometimes I'll be sitting at one PC, and need to hit the PC on the other side of the room or hall..like \\computername\c$ to get to the Docs and Settings to copy something out of a users profile over to the new machine.

Naming machines as such is certainly a method only enjoyed by smaller businesses networks, I can certainly see where it's not practical at all on networks where you're talking about machines up past the hundreds.
 
I usually try to have something like office location, department, type and number in the name
 
Where I was working, they had already implemented a naming scheme as follows:

(building location)-(user login ID)-(DT/LT - desktop or laptop)

Example:

GM-DTK2K-DT

As in, building is GM (building was for General Merchandise), username DTK2K, and is a desktop. However this was for our network, this naming scheme may or may not work for you... although it seemed to work well when we had to remote desktop some people, as some drivers were desktop/laptop specific, if its an LT (laptop), we know file transfers should expected to be slower over wireless... also we know if the building location is far or nearby we would know the expected latency between links.
 
Wow...Lots of replies. Thanks a million...

I've been familiar with naming schemes, but have always worked in a large environment. I am now working for a company that is 50 employees and turnover is rare. So I think I am going to base it on...

(location)+(user id)+(OS version)+(D or L for laptop or desktop)

Example...

TROYBWAYNEXPD....

I personally don't like using the user id in any naming scheme.....it just seems to make sense for this smaller company which virtually has no turnover....it would at least allow me to find the person rather quickly......
 
I used to use user's e-mail name and them either DTOP or LTOP since we had both desktops and laptops, and some users had both. So for example, my pc was called BHYMAN-DTOP

It worked well, we only had one office though.
 
For our 120 client network I know everyone by name, so the location I don't care much about, but I will name it as LASTNAME_FIRSTINITIAL , so SMITH_J etc... which was useful, but then I sometimes wish the serial number was there too so I started doing this

SMITH_J S/N: 00001112222 , it looks messy but I find that it works out great for what I need since some users may have two or three machines and SMITH_J_2 or SMITH_J_3 wouldn't be very helpful.
 
Galaxy, Neptune, Milkyway, Blackhole, Pluto, Space, Saturn, etc :D
 
PCxx here with ~100 machines

I would never use a username in the scheme, too much hassle to rename if they happen to leave the company.

I do want to update it by department for ease of use, even though I can remember every PCxx that is here...and other IP devices. It's kind of ridiculous.
 
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